• A new Android app called Beeper Mini allows users to send iMessages as blue bubbles from non-Apple devices.

• Beeper Mini bypasses traditional iMessage hacks by directly sending iMessages from Android devices.

• The app has been praised for its smooth functionality, sending messages seamlessly between Android and iPhone users.

140 points
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39 points
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Exactly. I don’t understand the interest and effort put in these makeshift solutions to integrate into a closed ecosystem managed by a company with so little interest in building interoperable solutions.

They’re a cancer to the computing industry that is metastasizing, let’s not help them at that.

Fuck apple and their walled garden.

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16 points

I don’t disagree with you, but open source has a long history of this sort of hostile forced-interoperability. Look at stuff like uBlock, there’s a real case to be made that it shouldn’t need to exist, and yet someone built it. Hostile “patching” of proprietary systems is not ideal, but fix barriers help in the short term.

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3 points

Well 1 is currently happening, the other never will.

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0 points

Yeah fuck apple in the ass…

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66 points

Hate to say it but who gives a fuck?

Just use signal.

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35 points

The hardest thing about switching communication apps is that you have to convince everyone you talk with to switch as well. I’m stuck in WhatsApp because that’s what my friends and family all use.

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8 points

Right? I feel it’s really snobby and disingenuous to just snap back and say “just ditch that and use so and so messaging app”, as if messaging platforms didn’t require your direct peers to also use them. As long as messaging platforms operate as walled gardens, we have little say on what apps we use. We’re at the mercy of the general populace and that’s all there is to it, at least until the DMA changes things. I really tried to make people jump ship from WhatsApp to telegram during what seemed like a mass exodus from even businesses (yeah bad choice but I didn’t know back then), ended up back on WhatsApp some 3 months later with my tail between my legs, nobody stayed on telegram even though a ton of people downloaded it and jumped in. Now imagine trying to get them all to use a privacy-focused app that gives them a hard time using it in multiple devices. Convenience is the reason why Meta, Apple, Google, MSFT, etc. are on top. You can’t expect the general populace to sacrifice it for privacy, not after continuously giving up freedom and privacy for the sake of convenience for decades in the digital space.

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5 points
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People who say that are essentially saying “stop using the messaging app that allows you to talk to everyone regardless of platform and use a proprietary walled garden where you can only talk with those people also using that same app.”

At least the iPhone messages app lets you send SMS and iMessage, switching seamlessly.

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1 point
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I just said fuck it one day, deleted WhatsApp and explained to family and friends why I did it. Slowly but surely, almost everyone switched.

But I do realize this will not work for everybody. Your contacts have the same right to use their phone as they see fit as you do, after all. And this kind of freedom is something super important, too.

Gotta find the compromise that works for both parties. If there is one to find, that is.

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19 points

I have to convince every one of my friends to switch because they all use SMS/iMessage. Outside of the US, you would have to convince every one of your friends to switch from WhatsApp.

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18 points

There’s been some social discrimination occurring around people who don’t have blue messages being excluded, or being seen as poor. Not a great use base but the fact I am even aware of blue Vs green messages means some people do.

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16 points

This is the only semi-legitimate reason I can get behind. For kids in grade-school.

If anybody outside of grade-school brings this up, I would laugh and ignore.

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2 points

Also the image and video quality problem.

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16 points

iPhone users be like “but I paid $1200 for this blue bubble!”

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5 points

1200 for a shitty subpar phone

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1 point
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And a software design 15 years old. None of the added stuff like notification drawer and updates over air is by Apple.

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12 points

I’d love to, but none of my friends use it unfortunately

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6 points

After 3 years of use of signal, I have converted my Mom which cares about privacy too from shows she seen. Which allowed us to convert my Brother, with it being the main discussion app. I also converted my SO because of a problem we had on messenger that was scary, finally I was able to move my Best friend, which is also a member of the DND group I started which moved to Signal because others (Brother, Best Friend) where already on Signal

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6 points

I got lucky. Back when that privacy scare with Whatsapp made mainstream news my Aunt asked in the extended family chat what alternatives there were. I responded that I use SIgnal with my friends (all 2 of them on Signal at the time) and just like that everybody switched. 2 hours later my entire paternal family are on Signal, and still are.

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-18 points
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3 points

Sorry, but that’s a pretty arrogant thing to say

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46 points

I’ll just continue to use my old strategy of not voluntarily communicating with people who care about what color my text bubble is.

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6 points

At this stage in the game, isn’t that basically the only difference?

I’ve never understood how this became an issue of shaming and exclusion.

Literally just star bellied sneetches.

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6 points

It’s not the only difference. It indicates the difference in experience parties receive. Higher quality pictures & video, E2E encryption are some of the differences. I’m not shamed for being on android but I can’t have the same quality conversations without convincing lots of people to use something like signal (which I do use with those I have convinced).

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2 points

LOL. Thanks for the sneetches comparison!

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38 points

Fucking insane a 16 year old kid figured it out.

It’s always wild to me thinking how good kids are with tech these days to be able to crack something like this (assuming it’s true).

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18 points

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but it always seems to me that kids are living in a world where they need to as present in their digital realities as much, if not more than, their actual ones. At work it seems like they are trying to be in two places at once sometimes.

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4 points

I wonder how much of that is down to their real world sucking and their digital world being pretty cool.

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14 points

It’s what naturally happens when smart people have free time. And teenagers have a lot of that.

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1 point

And teenagers have a lot of that

._.

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7 points

Most kids are clueless with tech to be honest. Yes they know how to use it, but they have no idea how it works behind the scenes. This has pretty scary consequences on how they are easily manipulated or scammed.

Some of them are very smart, sure, but on average I’d say they are less tech savvy than Gen X and millennials who grew up at a time you couldn’t use computers without some kind of knowledge of how it works (and smartphones didn’t exist).

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2 points

Right, I have to teach shortcuts to our young intern the exact same way as i had to do with my grandma. All the ui’s are so smooth now that even a context menu is too much.

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1 point
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33 points

im good thanks

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